Teardrop on the Campfire
by LittleMonsoon
Summary: After Leni suffers a nasty fright while out camping in the woods, Luna takes it upon herself to make her big sister feel better.


**_AN:_** _This was inspired by my favorite ever piece of official Loud House artwork; a picture of Luna and Leni sitting around a campfire, with Luna playing her guitar and Leni singing along._

 _I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

Teardrop on the Campfire

In the middle of a clearing in a dense wood located deep within the Upper Peninsula, a shapeless form consisting of thousands of tiny black ants swarmed and engulfed a Graham cracker that lay on the forest floor.

To an unobservant eye, that black mass could easily have been mistaken for an ever-shifting shadow projected by the low campfire that flickered nearby, but Luna was paying far too much attention to have been confused about what it was. She had been sitting there on a downed tree by the fire, the front of her body warmed by the flames while her back felt cold against the night, plucking away at the strings of her acoustic guitar and trying to write a song about those ants. Mostly as a sort of exercise for herself more than anything else.

Part of her wanted to prove true the old adage that inspiration could be found in even the most unlikely of places; from the birds of the sky to the beasts of the field and even including those creatures that crawled along in the dirt. Much like how her roommate possessed the uncanny ability to make a joke out of any situation, Luna liked to think that she could write a song about pretty much any subject, and in any style. Epic hard rock anthems were of course her preferred genre, the types of songs that were best played while wearing elaborate and theatrical glam costumes in front of packed stadiums while white sparks shot out of cannons in the background, but there were times when a softer approach was needed. When complicated pyrotechnics had to be swept aside to allow for subtler flames to burn.

Such was her thought process as she finger-picked a melody that was as constantly changing as those insects that enveloped the cracker. Hours prior, when it was still gloaming, that little morsel sat happily in Lola's hands as she struggled valiantly to craft what she had christened a 'triple-decker s'more.' It was, unfortunately, a fruitless effort. The massive treat practically disintegrated the moment she tried to bite down on it, and while she managed to salvage most of the chocolate and marshmallows, giant shards of golden-brown wafer landed at her feet onto a bed of dead leaves. No big deal. There were still several boxes of the stuff left over, and Lola and everyone else in the family had such a great time together roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories and reminiscing about years gone by. Luna, as was always the case whenever they went camping, was called upon to break out her guitar and lead everyone in rousing renditions of campfire songs, old classics like _Low Bridge_ and _That Lucky Old Sun_ and even, at Lana's request, _Rise and Shine (Arky Arky)_ , songs that ordinarily held no appeal to her, but that in the company of her family possessed a magical kind of quality.

Now it was passed midnight, and Luna was the only one who was still awake.

" _Along the leaves and hook-teethed burs  
_ _I see you swarm and crawl around  
_ _You're mother nature's carpenters  
_ _So busy though you make no sound_

 _Lonely little ants  
_ _So far from the hill…"_

Her voice was raspy and thin, as her tiredness was starting to catch up with her, and her playing was far below her usual standards. Nevertheless, she wanted to continue until the song was finished, lest she lay awake in her sleeping bag all night with the half-formed music playing endlessly in her mind, torturing her with its lack of closure.

 _"Warm before the firelight-"_

A earsplitting scream pierced the air, interrupting the music and causing Luna, in one panicked moment of pure instinct, to leap up from her seat with her hands gripped around the neck of her guitar, holding it before her like a baseball bat, as if she intended to wield the instrument as a weapon.

Earlier that night, when it was Lucy's turn to tell a scary story around the campfire, the little girl had adopted her spookiest voice to tell the tale of the Dogman, sometimes called the Wendigo, that roamed the forests of Michigan, devouring unsuspecting campers and lumberjacks in its massive jaws. Luna, who had already known of the legend of the Dogman from an old novelty song by the disc-jockey Steve Cook, had laughed the story off, but now it didn't seem quite so funny.

Just as she was about to lunge forward into the treeline to beat back whatever monster was terrorizing her family, she heard something that broke the tension completely; laughter.

"Aw, come on, Leni!" Luan's mirthful voice sounded from beyond the branches. "It was just a joke!" Luna could then hear the snapping of twigs and the rustling of underbrush, presumably caused by Leni as she either stormed off in anger, or, far more likely, ran away in fright at whatever Luan's prank had been, probably the old 'rubber tarantula in the sleeping bag' routine that Luan loved to pull whenever the family went camping. Leni, of course, fell for it every time.

No real harm was ever done though, for which Luna was grateful. She knew that within a matter of minutes, Leni would make her way back to her tent, her terror already forgotten by the time she reached her sleeping bag. There, tucked beneath the covers, Leni would fall quickly back to sleep, and have only pleasant dreams throughout the rest of the night.

Luna couldn't imagine that anything so dark as nightmares could ever live in her big sister's head.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Luna sat back down on the log and resumed her playing, picking up right where she left off.

 _"Warm before the firelight  
_ _Rest your heads and hear my song  
_ _You bravely face the forest night  
_ _So tiny yet so strong_

 _Lone-ly lit-tle ants  
_ _So far from the hill…_ "

What, exactly, was she trying to say through her music? Every song had a purpose, and surely there had to be more to her's than simply paying tribute to the most numerous insect on earth, but when she opened her mouth to sing another verse she found herself at a loss for words. To kill time while she thought of more lyrics, she decided to let her guitar do the talking for a while, plucking out a long and slinking solo that had a kind of almost Western feel to it, heavy on the hammer-ons and pull-offs. The tune weaved in and out and up and down through the smoke-filled air like a needle through clothe, and she felt like Neil Young during one of his folk-troubadour phases. With every press against those strings, Luna grimaced with pain. The end of her first finger was throbbing, as earlier that day while gathering firewood a small cut had appeared beneath the very tip of the fingernail, separating it slightly from the bed. She knew that the longer she went on, the more that cut would tear ever wider. Still, she kept playing. After all, one more verse, at least, was needed.

Looking again to the ants, she wondered what had drawn her to them in the first place. They reminded her of something in the way that they scrambled over one another, each one vying for a share of the food, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what that something was. Lisa had once told her that any single ant could carry fifty times its own body weight, but that their true strength was only revealed when they acted together as a colony consisting of thousands of brothers and sisters working as one.

As a child in a large family herself, Luna could relate.

Suddenly, it dawned on her how to finish the song.

" _Though one of you could lift a stone  
_ _In terms of strength; you do not lack  
_ _Just know that you are not alone  
_ _Your family's there to watch your back_

 _Lonely little ants  
_ _So far from the hill_

 _Lone-ly lit-tle ants  
_ _March back to your home…_ "

The final note echoed through the forest, and just like that the melody and all of the song's lyrics disappeared from her mind. Such was the nature of improvising. It came almost as a relief to her, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Much as she enjoyed having little unguarded moments of alone time with her guitar now and again to practice, she really _was_ exhausted from a full day of fun with her family, and desired nothing more than to retire into her tent and sleep 'til well passed noon.

Besides, sometimes a song was most special when it could only be played once. She was content to just let the tune fade out into oblivion; a gift to the Sugar Maples that surrounded her, to be enjoyed by no one else.

Or at least, so she thought, until she heard applause coming from the edge of the clearing, as if the trees of the forest were all of a sudden clapping their branches together.

The light from the fire, now little more than a small blaze, didn't extend quite far enough for Luna to see who it was, but all was made evident when she heard her big sister's voice calling out. "Woo!" Leni cheered. "Go Luna!"

Luna answered by bowing her head and smiling in appreciation towards the direction of where her sister's voice had come from, though even when she strained her tired eyes she only saw Leni as a shadowy ghost of a figure on the edge of the treeline. "Thanks mate," she said in an accent that was meant to mimic Mick Swagger's distinctive British drawl, though the English rocker never played any songs that were quite so stripped back as the one Luna had just finished.

"Do you think you could play it again?" Leni asked with a hint of sheepishness in her voice, as if she thought of the request as a huge bother and was already apologetic. "I kinda came in towards the end there, so I didn't really get to hear all the words."

"I don't think I could even if I tried," Luna admitted sadly. Despite her exhaustion, she had always felt that a good musician was never supposed to deny an encore when it was requested. "I pretty much just made it up on the spot. Now it's just…" She brought her hand to the side of her head and flicked the fingers out and away in imitation of a tiny explosion. "Poof, there and gone, like smoke."

"Oh…well, I know what that's like," Leni said. "I forget stuff too sometimes." Even without seeing her face, Luna could tell that her sister had to have been frowning when she said that, though her tone quickly changed from disappointment into wonderment. "You can just make up songs like that?"

"Yeah, sometimes," Luna answered humbly, rubbing the back of her head in embarrassment. "If I've got the right inspiration. I mean, it wasn't really one of my best, but-"

"I thought it was beautiful," Leni interrupted. "You're, like, so talented!"

Luna blushed and smiled. Ordinarily, the adulation that she earned from the crowds that she performed for energized her, yet there was something about her big sister's praise, so sincere and unpretentious, that only made her feel bashful. "Thanks Len," was all that she could think to say. She scooted over on her seat and patted the now-empty space next to her, inviting her sister to come warm her bones by the fire, an invitation that Leni immediately accepted.

Luna decided that her tent could wait a few minutes more. For now, she wanted to just take a while to enjoy her sister's company. The closer she approached, the more Luna could hear the chatter of Leni's shivering teeth, so she grabbed a few nearby birch twigs that had been set aside for kindling and threw them onto the pyre, letting the flames roar back to life in giant plumes.

Thanks to the fire's new intensity, Luna noticed something new about her sister as she sat by her side; streams of moisture that ran down her cheeks, even though the blonde girl maintained a smile, one that looked more strained than usual, as she extended her hands and warmed them by the blaze. "Whoah, you okay dude?" Luna asked with concern.

Leni didn't seem to know what Luna was so worried about. "Yeah, I'm fine, why d'ya ask?" Absentmindedly she touched the side of her face to brush aside a bothersome teardrop that was threatening to fall from her cheek, flicking it away into the flames.

There was something strangely pavlovian in the soft hiss that came when that drop of water landed on an ashen branch. " _Teardrop on the fire, fearless on my breath_ ," Luna sang to herself without thinking, instantly feeling embarrassed the second she saw Leni stare back at her, confused. Sometimes she just couldn't help herself.

"…What?"

 _Try to only reference songs that most people have actually heard of, Luna_. "That's a lyric from 'Teardrop,'" she explained uselessly. "It's, um, a song by Massive Attack."

Leni's befuddled expression didn't go away, but still she nodded as if all of a sudden everything was made clear. "Oh, okay," she said, chuckling in the same forced way that she did whenever Luan told a joke that she didn't quite understand but still wanted to seem supportive of. She went back to staring at the campfire, scratching now and again with the end of her right sandal at the mosquito bite that had formed earlier that day on top of her left foot.

Luna thought it so strange to see a blemish on Leni's otherwise perfect skin. "…It's just that I noticed you've been crying, so I wanted to see what's wrong."

"Nothing's _wrong_ , I'm just being silly and dumb is all," Leni explained, and Luna cringed at hearing such self-deprecation come out of her mouth. Worst of all was the matter-of-fact way in which she had said it. Leni took her hands away from the fire and wrapped herself in a hug, rubbing up and down at her biceps with her hands. Either she was still cold and trying to warm herself, or she was nervously fidgeting, and Luna wasn't quite sure which it was. "Luan kind of, um, gave me a little scare earlier."

Luna remembered the scream that had so startled her midway through her song, and all of the jigsaws suddenly fell into place. Honestly, she chastised herself; she should have realized from the start what had gotten Leni so upset. "Lemme guess," she said with a small smirk, "the ol' 'fake spider' bit?"

Leni shook her head. "No, she, um…" Breathing deep as if to brace herself, she whispered, "God, this is so stupid…" and shut her eyes, and again Luna couldn't quite tell of her reason for doing so. Was she merely shielding them from the smoke billowing from the fire, or was she, out of embarrassment, trying to avoid looking at her little sister? "So, remember that story Lucy told us? You know, about the Dogman?"

"Yeah…"

After one final long sigh, Leni took to rambling. "Okay, so, like, I was laying in my sleeping bag, right? And, ya know, I'm already having trouble falling asleep, just 'cause it's kinda chilly and the ground is hard and I have this stupid mosquito bite on my foot that just _won't_. _Stop_. _Itching_." At that, she reached down and frustratingly dug her long index fingernail into that bite in the hopes of dousing that burning itch, leaving behind a deep indentation from which came forth a trickle of thin blood. "And I hear this, like, _growling_ noise coming from outside my tent. You know how sometimes, when you're walking Charles, he'll see another dog and he'll get down real low and show his teeth and snarl like he wants to fight?" She waited for Luna to nod her head before continuing. "Well, it sounded like that. So I'm freaking out, 'cause I'm thinking it's maybe a wolf or a coyote or something, and I wake up Lori 'cause I'm too afraid to go check to see what's out there by myself, and right away she's all crabby with me for getting her up. Not even scared or nothin', just…annoyed. She's all like, 'this had better be important,' and I'm trying to tell her what's happening when suddenly I hear this, like, _evil_ sounding voice that says, 'The Dogman's here to eat you up, Leni.' Then something _SLAMMED_ into the side of the tent and, well, I kinda ran off screaming." She hung her head, looking about as miserable as Luna had ever seen her. "'Didn't even realize it was Luan 'till I heard her calling after me," she finished quietly. "I feel like such a dumb little kid…"

Luna listened to the whole story with a sympathetic ear. It broke her heart to see her happy-go-lucky big sister so depressed, but luckily she knew that making her feel better would be a straightforward matter. That was the thing about sweet, simple Leni; easily upset, yet even more easily comforted.

Luna slid closer and placed her hand soothingly on Leni's back, feeling the soft cotton of her pill-coated nightgown and changing her expression into one that she had seen on her mother's face countless times whenever any of her children were in need of a warm hug and a reassuring word. "You don't have to feel bad about getting scared," Luna calmly told her. "If that'd happened to me, I'd have been plenty freaked out too." Leni only hummed noncommittally, a response that Luna didn't quite know what to make of, so she decided to continue on as best as she could. "I know the woods can be pretty spooky, especially at night, but there's nothing to be afraid of. The Dogman's not real, Leni. He's just an urban legend, that's all…"

Lori took on the same nurturing tone whenever she comforted Lana after a nightmare.

To Luna's genuine surprise, however, Leni's reaction wasn't to perk up and breathe a sigh of relief and throw her arms around her little sister in an appreciative hug, but instead she merely opened her eyes halfway and shot Luna a weary glare. "Yeah, I know that," she said in a clipped voice. If it was strange to see an imperfection on her porcelain skin, then it was doubly odd to hear Leni speak in such a curt manner.

It took Luna aback to have her compassion rebuked so bluntly, but she supposed that she could understand where her sister was coming from. On second thought, she saw how her words could have come across as condescending, and the absolute last thing she had wanted was to make Leni feel any smaller than she already did. Fear was a powerful enough emotion on it's own without shame being added into the mix. "Right; of course you do," she said with conviction, suddenly feeling guilty. "I wasn't saying that you didn't, or talking down to you or anything. I was just, you know…" She gestured her hands before her as she searched for what to say, casting formless shadow puppets in the firelight's flicker with every motion. "…trying to make you feel better is all." It seemed to her as good an explanation as any.

"Of course you were." Leni grabbed a handful of dead leaves that lay near her bleeding foot and tossed them into the fire, sending new sparks dancing upwards into the sky. "You know that one weird song?" she asked with those embers reflecting in her gentle eyes. "The one that goes, 'this is not my beautiful wife, this is not my beautiful house?'"

Of course Luna knew that one, though she thought it a pretty random question for Leni to suddenly ask from seemingly out of nowhere. "Um, yeah," she said. "I mean, those aren't the exact lyrics, but the song's called 'Once in a Lifetime.' Why?"

Another long sigh escaped from Leni's lips before she spoke up again in a voice that was so quiet, it was almost drowned out in the roar and crackle of the campfire and the popping hiss of the burning sticks within. "That's kind of how I feel sometimes; like everything in my life is just _wrong_ , somehow."

It occurred to Luna all of a sudden that Leni was trying to use the language of music to reach out to her. "What do you mean?" she asked, trying to keep her voice unfaltering, though by this point she was starting to become truly worried for her sister. Clearly, there was more than mere creature fear running through her veins on this cold dark night.

"I mean that _I_ should be the one trying to make _you_ feel better after _you_ get scared, not the other way around," Leni explained. "I'm the big sister here…" She trailed off and went quiet for a moment, running her hand anxiously through her hair, where a few loose golden strands became caught between her fingers. These thin threads, just as the kindling and the dead leaves and her teardrop before, were as well tossed into the campfire. "Luna, can I ask you something?" she asked as she watched those fibers turn to ash, imbuing the smoke with the faintest hint of the smell of burnt hair.

"Of course."

"Do you…" She choked up, as if she couldn't bring herself to finish her question, but eventually she forced the words from her throat. "Do you look up to me?"

Luna's voice, as well, became wavering and broken. "Leni, I-"

"I mean, don't get me wrong; I know that you _love_ me," Leni specified, cutting her sister off. "Everybody _loves_ me, and _cares about_ me." She spat those words bitterly, as if they were curses. "I just wonder sometimes if anybody looks up to me the same way that I look up to Lori. She's so strong, and smart, and mature, and I'm just this stupid girl who still gets scared at night and needs her little sister to make her feel better." Though the heat from the fire had long ago evaporated the tears from her face, Luna couldn't recall ever having seen Leni quite so distressed. "You must think I'm so weak…"

For one hellish moment Luna was at a total loss for what to do. This was a far cry from the simple problem with a simple solution she had thought that it would be when she initially saw her sister's tears glimmer in the flames' orange and red glow. Guilty as it made her feel even to think it, perhaps part of her had always underestimated Leni's capacity for self-reflection, and had assumed that all it would ever take to chase away the demons that pulled and scratched at her hair were a few motherly words about how the Dogman didn't really exist. She decided then and there that she would never make that mistake again.

Her hand reached out and cupped Leni's face, partly so that in case new rivulets of tears should start pouring down from her eyes, she'd be at the ready to brush them aside. "Leni," she said, turning her sister's gaze away from the direction of the fire and instead towards something so much warmer; Luna's loving stare. "You were the very _first_ person that I ever looked up to."

Leni dared to grin a weak but hopeful smile. "…Really?"

"Really," Luna promised, smiling back. "Even before Lori, and even before Mom and Dad."

The elder girl appeared skeptical, as if she thought herself as undeserving of such an honor. "…But, why?" she asked slowly, taking Luna by the wrist and pushing her hand away. As swiftly as it had arrived, Leni's fragile smile then collapsed, much like how the hemlock log that sat in the center of the campfire had long ago burned into cinder and broke in half under its own weight.

Fortunately for Leni, Luna knew that beautiful things were capable of sprouting from ashes. "Because you're my big sister," she said simply. "For as many times as I've tried to be there for you over the years, it's nothing compared to how many times _you've_ been there for _me_. I don't think you realize just how much I need you."

"Yeah, right," Leni scoffed. "Name one time that you've ever needed me."

Never before had Luna ever faced such an easy challenge. "Do you remember when I was nine years old and had just come back from my first rock concert?" she asked, cracking a confident grin. Leni, who recognized that her memory was rather hit-or-miss, only shook her head. "Remember," she pressed, hoping to jog her sister's memory, "I wanted to start dressing like a real rock star, so I was up in my room, trying to cut holes in all my jeans with the big kitchen knife, when you came in…"

As Luna trailed off, something seemed to stir within Leni's mind, and she perked up an almost imperceptible amount. "Oh yeah!" she said. "I rushed over and made you put the knife down 'cause I was so worried that you were gonna hurt yourself."

"I _did_ hurt myself," Luna reminded her. "'Nicked my thumb pretty bad and started crying, not even because of the pain, but because I thought you'd be like Mom and Dad or Lori and yell at me for ruining all my clothes. You remember what you did instead?" Again, Leni just shook her head, though Luna didn't mind. This was the part of the story that she wanted to tell out loud. "After I explained what I was trying to do, you told me to wait on my bed while you went downstairs for something, and when you came back you had mom's toolbox and a band-aid for my cut. You said to me-"

"'-I may not understand what's gotten into you," Leni finished, everything suddenly coming back to her, "'but if tearing up your clothes makes you happy, then I want to help out.' See, you were doing it all wrong, trying to use a kitchen knife. What you're _supposed_ to do is lay the jeans flat on a table, use some sandpaper to distress the knees, then use a boxcutter to carefully rip the denim. 'Much safer that way."

"Yeah, and you stayed up all night showing me," Luna reminisced. "I still have some of those jeans, you know. They don't even fit me anymore but I still keep them in my dresser, just 'cause I can't bear to throw or give them away."

"Yeah, well, big deal," Leni said dejectedly, downplaying the importance of her actions. "So I'm good at fashion design. So what? That's just shallow stuff anyway…"

"It wasn't just about the clothes," Luna explained. "It's about how when I was trying to make a big change in my life, and I was so scared and nervous, _you_ were there to tell me that you supported me; that I should always be myself and do what makes me happy. Don't you see, Leni? You're where I get my confidence from." At that point, Leni started shedding fresh tears, though by her tiny smile, Luna could tell that they were no longer flowing out of sadness. The sight of that water rolling down her sister's cheek called to mind yet another lyric from 'Teardrop'; _Love, love is a verb, Love is a doing word…_

In her efforts to make her sister feel better, Luna realized that she had forgotten the weight of the acoustic guitar across her lap. Grinning conspiratorially, she began to percussively strum muted chords at a rapid-fire pace, tapping her foot to the beat. "One more thing, Leni," she said as she played. "Just because you're my big sister, that doesn't mean you have to feel ashamed for being vulnerable in front of me. We're family, and that means that we rely on and support each other, whether younger or older. It's a game of give and take, like a duet; we both have an important part to play. Which is why, as soon as I count you in, I want you to start singing, okay?"

Leni seemed delighted but confused at the same time. A blush came to her damp face as soon as she was told that she was expected to perform. "But I don't know what song you're playing," she tried to point out.

"Neither do I," Luna said cheekily. "I'm kinda just making it up as I go along, and so can you. Everybody's got a song in their heart, Leni; and with a heart like your's, I bet you've got some beautiful music inside of you."

"Is that what my heartbeat is?" Leni asked with childlike sincerity. "Drumming?"

Luna smiled even wider and nodded, then counted off, "One, two, one-two-three-four!" No longer was she muting the strings, but instead she was strumming out happy-sounding major chords that bounced among the trees. Before, when she was playing alone, she was trying to keep her music subdued, but now she didn't care if she woke anyone up. She wanted the whole forest to know how much she loved her sister, and how she couldn't make beautiful music without her.

After a short instrumental intro, Leni let go of her nerves and began to sing, her voice simultaneously as delicate as a wren chick just hatching from an egg and as free as a Sandhill Crane soaring through the sky.


End file.
